1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communications apparatus and a service providing technique using the communications apparatus based on a standardized interface.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years and continuing, there is a trend toward standardization of interfaces for various services provided as Web services. Standardizing interfaces defined by different venders can reduce inflexibility of relations between a client and a server that provides a service to clients, and allows various services offered by different venders to coexist in a system. Users can have broad options, while the business opportunities expand for the venders of software for realizing services.
JP 2003-091377A discloses a technique for transmitting reference information, instead of the contents to be printed, from a wireless device to cause the print job to be executed for the contents. Another publication, JP 2003-345713A discloses a technique for generating and supplying a proof to an authenticated client and allowing accumulated documents to be output when the verification is presented. The latter technique enables the accumulated documents to be output without wasting the resources, by allowing the authentication function to be shared among multiple processes accessing the accumulated documents.
On the other hand, venders generally want to implement their own functions to distinguish their services from the competitors. However, if the functions of the standardized interface are expanded to deal with independently developed functions, that interface is no longer the standardized one, and the compatibility achieved by the interface standardization will be lost again.